Impeachapalooza

A blog about the impeachment of Donald Trump

  • Diplomat’s Testimony Drew “Direct Line” Between Military Funds and Biden Probe

    October 22, 2019

    Tom Williams/Zuma

    The top US diplomat in Ukraine testified Tuesday that he was informed by a Trump administration official that the president had conditioned military aid for the country on an investigation into Trump’s political rivals, the Washington Post reports.

    In closed-door testimony to House impeachment investigators, William B. Taylor alleged that he had been told by Gordon Sondland—the GOP megadonor and hotel magnate who Trump appointed as ambassador to the European Union—that both military assistance for the war-torn country and a White House visit for its new president would be contingent on an announcement that Ukrainian officials would investigate Democrats. The Post, which obtained Taylor’s opening statement, reported:

    “During that phone call, Amb. Sondland told me that President Trump had told him that he wants President [Volodymyr] Zelensky to state publicly that Ukraine will investigate Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election,” Taylor said in the statement…

    “Amb. Sondland also told me that he now recognized that he had made a mistake by earlier telling the Ukrainian officials to whom he spoke that a White House meeting with President Zelensky was dependent on a public announcement of investigations—in fact, Amb. Sondland said, ‘everything’ was dependent on such an announcement, including security assistance,’” Taylor told House investigators.

    “He said that President Trump wanted President Zelensky ‘in a public box’ by making a public statement about ordering such investigations.”

    In his July call with Zelensky, Trump asked the Ukrainian president to cooperate with Attorney General Bill Barr and Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, on matters related to Burisma—a Ukrainian gas company tied to Biden’s son—as well as on a series of conspiracy theories surrounding the 2016 election and the origins of the FBI’s Russia probe. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), a member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee who witnessed Taylor’s deposition, told the New York Times Tuesday that Taylor “drew a very direct line…between President Trump’s decision to withhold funds and refuse a meeting with Zelensky unless there was a public pronouncement of him by investigations of Burisma and the so-called 2016 conspiracy theories.”

    Trump has insisted that there was no connection between the suspension of military aid to Ukraine and his attempts to pressure Zelensky into investigating Democrats, often repeating the phrase “no quid pro quo.” But Trump’s chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, publicly contradicted this line last week, when he appeared to admit that Trump had indeed linked military aid to an investigation related to the 2016 actions of the Democratic National Committee, which Wasserman Schultz ran at the time. Mulvaney later attempted to retract that admission.

  • New Evidence Hints at Another Justice Department Coverup

    October 22, 2019

    Attorney General William Barr speaks at vigil for law enforcement officers who have died in the line of duty in Washington, DC in May. Shane T. Mccoy via ZUMA

    Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) released evidence on Tuesday that the Justice Department buried the whistleblower complaint about President Donald Trump’s call with the Ukrainian president by failing to refer the matter to the Federal Election Commission (FEC). Klobuchar suggested the Justice Department violated a longstanding agreement between the agencies to share information about possible campaign finance violations for potential enforcement action.

    To recap: The whistleblower complaint at the heart of the impeachment inquiry didn’t just contain evidence that the president pressured a foreign government to help him win reelection. It also contained evidence of a potential campaign finance violation. When President Trump asked for dirt on his political opponent, he likely illegally solicited a “thing of value” from a foreign national.

    In August, Justice Department officials decided that rather than turn the whistleblower complaint over to Congress, department lawyers would assess the allegations against Trump, including evidence that the president had broken campaign finance law. After what news reports described as a cursory review, the department declined to launch a criminal investigation, finding that Trump had not asked for a “thing of value.” This was a stretch; campaign finance experts generally agree that opposition research damaging to an opponent, which campaigns can pay a lot of money for, is clearly valuable. The FEC also considers it a “thing of value.” Nevertheless, the department lawyers declared the matter case closed.

    But under a 1978 memorandum of understanding between the department and the FEC—which, like Justice is authorized to penalize campaign finance violations—the complaint should have been passed onto the FEC even if the department declined to launch a criminal investigation, so the election watchdog can determine whether a civil penalty is called for. 

    Earlier this month, Klobuchar set out to uncover whether the Justice Department had honored this agreement, sending two letters to the FEC inquiring whether it had received any such referral. On October 18, the commission’s Democratic chair, Ellen Weintraub, confirmed to Klobuchar that the FEC had not been notified. “The refusal to inform the FEC and refer the matter regarding the President’s call to the FEC as required to do, as the Justice Department is required, undermines our campaign finance system and is unacceptable in a democracy,” Klobuchar said in Tuesday statement.

    What’s unclear so far is why no such referral was made. Either the Justice Department dropped the ball, or Klobuchar has helped discover another avenue in the administration’s sprawling coverup.

  • Trump Scoffs at “Phony Emoluments Clause” While Complaining About G-7 Scandal

    October 21, 2019

    Yuri Gripas/Zuma

    While defending his now-reversed decision to hold the G-7 Summit at his Doral resort, President Donald Trump scoffed at the section of the Constitution that prevents federal officeholders from receiving gifts from foreign governments.

    “You people with this phony emoluments clause,” he said, during an interview at the White House Monday, before continuing with a different thought. “And by the way, I would say that it’s cost me anywhere from $2-to-5 billion to be president, and that’s OK, between what I lose and what I could have made.”

    Last month, a federal appeals court dealt Trump a legal blow when it ruled that one of several lawsuits alleging that Trump is violating the emoluments clause can go forward. As we explained, the court noted that foreign officials have routinely spent money at the president’s properties:

    When Trump took office, he refused to give up ownership or control of his business empire—which includes restaurants and hotels in New York City and Washington, D.C.—though he said he would no longer maintain day-to-day oversight. It’s an unprecedented situation: No other presidents, at least in recent history, have come to office with such an extensive business operation. Critics claimed that Trump was violating the emoluments clause—a section of the Constitution that prohibits the president from accepting payments from foreign governments—because foreign officials almost immediately began spending at the president’s hotels in New York and Washington.

    In December 2017, in one of the first big court cases dealing with the issue, a federal judge in New York threw out a suit brought by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and a group of restauranteurs in New York. The judge ruled that the plaintiffs’ argument—that their businesses had suffered because foreign governments were instead patronizing Trump-owned establishments in hopes of currying favor with the president—was too speculative. But in a 2-1 decision Friday, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals overruled the trial judge, stating that the plaintiffs had a right to attempt to prove their argument. The court noted that numerous foreign officials have said in the press that they booked events at Trump properties to make a good impression.

    On Monday, Trump sought to defend his actions by comparing himself to George Washington. “Other presidents were wealthy,” he said. “George Washington was actually considered a very, very rich man at the time. But they ran their businesses.”

    Watch the video below:

  • Read Nancy Pelosi’s “Fact Sheet” About Trump’s Ukraine Call

    October 21, 2019

    Caroline Brehman/Zuma

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) released a “fact sheet” Monday detailing President Donald Trump’s “shakedown” of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, as well as a “pressure campaign” to get Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and a subsequent “cover up,” the Washington Post reports.

    “President Trump has betrayed his oath of office, betrayed our national security and betrayed the integrity of our elections for his own personal political gain,” Pelosi’s document states.

    The document, titled “Truth Exposed,” includes text messages from Ambassadors Gordon Sondland, Kurt Volker, and Bill Taylor.

    Read the full document here:

  • John Kasich Calls for Impeachment

    October 18, 2019

    Yesterday, White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney admitted on national TV that Donald Trump had attempted to use vital military aide to extort Ukraine into investigating Democrats. Mulvaney made a valiant attempt to un-admit that in a statement issued hours later, but the damage was already done.

    For some Republicans on Capitol Hill, Mulvaney’s offense wasn’t the fact of the quid pro quo; it was that he was honest enough, albeit briefly, to acknowledge it. Here are a couple of GOP aides bravely using anonymity to tell Politico that Mulvaney should “stop talking”:

    Republicans lawmakers felt exasperated by the White House’s lack of discipline and coordination. “Mulvaney needs to learn when to stop talking,” a leadership aide told POLITICO. Democrats latched onto Mulvaney’s statements as further evidence of what they consider White House wrongdoing out in the open.

    “He was deeply, deeply unhelpful,” said another House GOP aide.

    But other Republicans did acknowledge the damning nature of what Mulvaney had revealed, as Politico noted:

    “It’s not an etch a sketch,” Republican Rep. Francis Rooney of Florida said about Mulvaney’s comments. “It is kind of hard to argue that he didn’t say it, right? if I understood it correctly, he basically cleared up what was a matter of some vagueness that he basically said it was a quid pro quo.”

    “You don’t hold up foreign aid that we had previously appropriated for a political initiative. Period,” added Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski.

    Today, John Kasich, the former Republican governor of Ohio, took the criticism of Trump a step further. Kasich, who ran against Trump in the 2016 primary and has been an outspoken critic of the president, announced that because of the Mulvaney revelations, he now supports impeaching Trump. “It’s totally inappropriate,” Kasich said. “It’s an abuse of power.”

  • Mick Mulvaney Issues Furious Denial of Mick Mulvaney’s “Quid Pro Quo” Allegations

    October 17, 2019

    Evan Vucci/AP

    Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney on Thursday night sent out a statement to reporters moonwalking back an admission he’d made during a White House press briefing earlier in the day: that the Trump administration withheld military aid from Ukraine as a ploy to get Ukraine to investigate a baseless theory involving Democrats, a server, and the 2016 election. In the span of a few hours, Mulvaney had covered the full spectrum of Trumpish protestation: from a wised-up “everyone does it” to a martyred cry of total innocennce.

    Here’s what he told reporters hours ago:

    When ABC News’ Jon Karl pointed out that what Mulvaney had said amounted to a quid pro quo, Mulvaney responded: “We do that all the time with foreign policy. Now, in a statement that starts with blaming the media for misconstruing what he told reporters, Mulvaney claimed that there actually “never was any condition on the flow of the aid related to the matter of the DNC server.” 

  • Mulvaney Admits Quid Pro Quo, Says We Should “Get Over It”

    October 17, 2019

    Mick Mulvaney

    White House chief of staff Mick MulvaneyEvan Vucci/AP

    Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, for some reason, has just admitted that aid to Ukraine was held up because President Trump wanted them to investigate political opponents:

    There are probably a few people who genuinely don’t understand the distinction here. Luckily, I’m here to help. Consider the following two cases:

    CASE 1: “If we lift the embargo on Cuba, it will hurt us with the Cuban immigrant vote in Florida. We shouldn’t do it.”

    CASE 2: “I want Ukraine to investigate Democrats. We should hold up military aid until they promise to do it.”

    Mulvaney is right: presidents do #1 all the time. Domestic politics invariably affects foreign policy, sometimes crassly and sometimes not.

    But #2? Presidents absolutely don’t do that all the time. This is not “domestic politics.” It’s using the official power of the US government to force a foreign country to smear a political opponent.

    The only way to not see the difference between these two cases is to deliberately close your eyes and refuse to see it. They are night and day. What Trump has done with Ukraine is very clearly not something that happens “all the time” in foreign policy. Until now, in fact, it never happened.

  • How Impeachment Helped Tom Steyer Reach the Debate Stage

    October 16, 2019

    AP Photo/John Minchillo

    At last night’s debate, the Democratic candidates clamored for Donald Trump’s impeachment—and given recent poll numbers, the issue could be a political winner. But none of the Democrats owe as much to the idea of impeachment as Tom Steyer. For years, the billionaire activist has bankrolled an attempt to build a grassroots environmental movement with his NextGen advocacy groups. And beginning in 2017, Steyer poured money into Need to Impeach, a pro-impeachment group that was built largely around Steyer’s own image, that included Super Bowl ads featuring Steyer.

    On the debate stage, Steyer was eager to talk about that history. “I started the Need to Impeach movement, because I knew there was something desperately wrong at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” he said. “Impeaching and removing this president is something that the American people are demanding. They’re the voice that counts, and that’s who I went to, the American people.”

    For Steyer, even qualifying for the debate was a challenge. Despite his own enormous personal wealth, DNC rules required him to accumulate at least 130,000 individual donors to make it onto the stage. So how does a billionaire who is self-funding his campaign convince average Americans to send him small donations? As we reported in July, the petition drive that Need to Impeach launched early in the Trump presidency appeared to form the backbone of this effort:

    The petition, organized by the Steyer-founded organization Need to Impeach, hasn’t achieved its stated goal—but, according to the group, it has netted the names and contact information of more than 8.2 million people. Need to Impeach has bragged that its email list is larger than the National Rifle Association’s, and Steyer has reportedly poured more than $50 million into the group, even renting billboards in New York’s Times Square. 

    When he announced his run, Steyer said he would separate himself from Need to Impeach’s operations (as well as from NextGen’s). But Steyer did make use of all that information vacuumed up by his earlier political organizations, purchasing or renting the massive email contact lists they had built:

    Since launching his campaign [a day earlier], Steyer has sent at least two emails to the Need to Impeach list and one to the NextGen list. The emails each contained multiple links to his campaign website or ActBlue page, both of which allow supporters to donate to Steyer’s campaign. The ActBlue page asks readers to “donate just $1 today to help Tom get closer to the debate stage.”

    According to federal filings submitted last night, Steyer’s campaign paid Need to Impeach $390,000 to buy or rent computer equipment and email lists. Another $31,000 was spent buying equipment and renting email information from NextGen.

    That’s nowhere near Steyer’s biggest expense—he spent about $47 million in all last quarter—but it did help his campaign rake in more than $1.4 million in small donations. And it helped him score a coveted spot in the debate.

  • The Democratic Candidates Aren’t Backing Away From Impeachment

    October 15, 2019

    It didn’t take long for the candidates at Tuesday’s Democratic presidential debate to call for President Donald Trump’s impeachment.

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said that Congress needs to impeach Trump to ensure the survival of the Constitution. “This is about Donald Trump,” she said. “But understand, it’s about the next president and the next president and the next president and the future of this country. The impeachment must go forward.”

    Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) took to superlatives, calling Trump “the most corrupt president in the history of this country.”

    “I think that the House will find him worthy of impeachment because of the emoluments clause,” he said. “This is a president who is enriching himself while using the Oval Office to do that, and that is outrageous.”

    It’s not just incumbent on the House to impeach Trump, Sanders said. “Mitch McConnell has got to do the right thing and allow a free and fair trial in the Senate.”

    Former Vice President Joe Biden said he agrees, reiterating what he said when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the start of an impeachment inquiry: that he’d support impeachment if the White House continued to stonewall Congress. Trump “is the most corrupt president in modern history, and I think all of our history,” he said. House Democrats “have no choice but to move.”

    Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) said that, as a former prosecutor, she can tell Trump has shown a “clear consciousness of guilt.” She, like Biden and Sanders, referred to Trump as “corrupt.”

    “Our framers imagined this moment, a moment where we would have a corrupt president,” she said. “And our framers then rightly designed our system of democracy to say there will be checks and balances. This is one of those moments, and so Congress must act.”

  • House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Says No Impeachment Vote “At This Time”

    October 15, 2019

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi threw a wet blanket over the impeachment inquiry on Tuesday night, telling reporters that the House would not hold a full vote authorizing an impeachment proceeding “at this time.” She took care to point out that the vote isn’t required.